Hà Nội street food: 13 dishes to try and when to eat them

Hà Nội eats by the clock. A stall cooks one dish, at one time of day, and when the pot is empty it packs up. Get the timing right and the city feeds you beautifully. Here are thirteen dishes, in the order the day serves them.

Breakfast

• Phở: rice noodles in a clear beef or chicken broth. The city’s breakfast, from first light until the stalls sell out. Our guide explains how to order phở.
• Bánh cuốn: silky steamed rice sheets rolled around pork and wood ear mushroom, with fish sauce to dip. Pick a stall where you can watch the steamer. More in our bánh cuốn guide.
• Xôi: sticky rice, sold in the morning from baskets and small stalls and wrapped to take away. Try xôi xéo, yellow sticky rice with mung bean and crispy fried shallots.
• Bún riêu: rice vermicelli in a tangy tomato broth with soft, crumbly clouds of paddy crab, often with fried tofu. Breakfast or lunch.
• Bún thang: the delicate one. A clear chicken broth with shredded chicken, thin strips of egg and pork sausage, every ingredient cut fine and laid out neatly. The story goes it began as a way to use up the last of the Tết feast.

Lunch

• Bún chả: pork grilled over charcoal and served in a warm bowl of dipping sauce, with cold noodles and herbs. Follow the smoke from late morning. Here is how to eat bún chả.
• Nem rán: crisp fried spring rolls of pork, mushroom and glass noodles, usually ordered alongside bún chả. In the south they are chả giò.
• Bún đậu mắm tôm: a bamboo tray of pressed rice noodles, fried tofu, boiled pork and herbs, with mắm tôm, fermented shrimp paste, whisked with lime and chilli. Strong, pungent and much loved. Ask for fish sauce if you can’t face it.
• Chả cá: turmeric fish finished at your table with a heap of dill. A sit-down meal for lunch or dinner. See our chả cá guide.

Afternoon

• Bánh mì: the Vietnamese baguette sandwich, from a cart, for the gap between meals or any time at all. Sài Gòn gets the fame; Hà Nội has plenty of good ones.
• Cà phê trứng: egg coffee, egg yolk whisked with condensed milk over strong coffee. It tastes like warm tiramisu. Best in a small café up a narrow staircase.
• Kem Tràng Tiền: the ice cream from Tràng Tiền street, by Hoàn Kiếm Lake, a Hà Nội favourite for decades. Get a stick of kem cốm, flavoured with young green rice. Many locals eat theirs without getting off the motorbike.

Evening

• Chè: sweet soups and puddings of beans, jellies, fruit and coconut milk, warm in winter and over crushed ice in summer. The perfect last stop.

As the sun goes down, the bia hơi corners fill up with stools, cold fresh beer and snacks like roasted peanuts and fried tofu. That is dinner, too, if you let it be.

Good to know

• Breakfast stalls are often gone by mid-morning. If you want phở or bánh cuốn, go early.
• The sign tells you the dish. One name on the sign, one thing in the pot.
• Hà Nội has a real winter. From December to February the city wants hot broth and warm chè; in the summer heat it lives on iced drinks.
• Carry small notes, and pay at the end.
• Don’t try to eat all thirteen in one day. Two or three a day, at the right hours, is the way.

Eat Hà Nội with us

Most of these dishes are not on our menu, but our Hà Nội outings sit you down at the same kind of stalls. The Dawn Phở Run starts at a 6 a.m. phở kitchen in the Old Quarter: two bowls from two rival stalls, a plate of bánh cuốn and a cà phê đen to finish. In our Egg Coffee & Phin Workshop you whisk your own cà phê trứng and taste salt coffee and coconut coffee too. And a Bia Hơi Corner Night ends the day with bia hơi or soft drinks, five street snacks and a toasting lesson.